Republicans: Clinton equals 'more of the same'

GOP elected officials and political operatives kept returning to one line of attack against Hillary Clinton on Monday: Barack Obama's third term.

Amid the usual slams on Benghazi, emails and regulatory overreach, Republicans spent the opening day of their convention arguing that a Clinton presidency would mean four more years of Obama administration initiatives that Americans clearly don't want.

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“Hillary Clinton’s plan is more of the same: more government, more taxes, more regulation, more immigration and more debt,” Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions said.

During the evening keynote addresses, marquee speakers like Sessions, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton all riffed off the night’s theme — Make America Safe Again — to warn that Clinton’s foreign policy would repeat Obama's mistakes and increase danger in the world.

“We would like a commander-in-chief who calls its enemy by its name, and a commander-in-chief who draws red lines cautiously but enforces them ruthlessly,” Cotton said.

“And it would be nice to have a commander-in-chief who could be trusted to handle classified information,” he added.

A sizable portion of the evening program was devoted recounting the gruesome details of the 2012 attack in Benghazi and placing the blame on Clinton.

Patricia Smith, the mother of slain Benghazi victim Sean Smith, told the audience in searing detail that Clinton had looked her in the eye at her son’s funeral and told her that a video was the reason he died. As convention-goers interrupted her to call Clinton a liar, Smith agreed and said the former secretary of state “should be in stripes.“

Border safety came up with an address by Mary Ann Mendoza — the mother of a police officer killed by an undocumented immigrant — who told the crowd that Americans “need an administration that care more about Americans than illegals."

“A vote for Hillary is putting all of our children's lives at risk," she said.

House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) followed with a call to end sanctuary cities, while referring to Mendoza’s story.

“We heard powerful testimony from people who have been devastated by Obama's reckless immigration policy,” McCaul said. “Haven't we had enough? Hillary Clinton is promising more of the same.”

Earlier in the day, speakers sounded the "more of the same" theme in varying degrees of specificity.

“Hillary Clinton offers four more years of the same failed and tired policies that voters rejected when Republicans won the Senate majority in 2014,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said as part of the parade of speakers.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) said: “Hillary Clinton has made clear that she will double down on the worst of the Obama-era policies and, indeed, go even further, advocating for the most extreme left-wing Democrat platform America has ever seen."

Former Colorado state Rep. Libby Szabo came out swinging, saying the status quo is untenable if she or people like her are to maintain the kind of life that her parents and grandparents lived. But Hillary Clinton "would give us just that," Szabo said, "although she tries to disguise it in a brightly colored pantsuit.”

Then there was the matter of the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s private email servers.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) took that head-on, saying that “Hillary Clinton has repeatedly sidestepped the truth and will do it again."

Decisions on who runs this country, Roberts added, "will no longer be made by a confused FBI or the administration's Department of Justice. It will be up to the American people. It will be up to us in November.”